Tantra has been called the path to uncovering our essentially pure nature, as Christopher Wallis puts it, our true nature (bodhi) and thereby shifting into a paradigm of radical freedom (moksa). There are many ‘near enemies’ on the path, however, when our view (of the path), our practice, and the impact on our life align we can see signs that we are indeed on the spiritual awakening spectrum.
Christopher Wallis starts with the commitment that every belief be held lightly, and enquired into so it is not held superficially. Likewise, any intuition you hold is not a gut feeling, but developed out of your spiritual practice. It is the discernment of mind-body. It is important to recognise that the idea of thoughts emanating from the mind/head is a Western cultural construct. In the East they see thoughts as being situated in the heart/chest. But as Wallis notes, they have no fixed location. This is one of the reasons we talk of the heart-mind and of mind-body.
In the Shaiva Tantra tradition, there is no Universe separate from the Self; we are manifested patterns of consciousness. This is the meaning of the saying that the universe has intelligence. It is fine tuned for life. This therefore connects to the belief that everything is perfectly calibrated in your life as it is for your awakening. This very situation, this pattern, is conscious intelligence. Nothing needs to be different.
Initially, this appears as ‘you are not your thoughts’, but later you are your thoughts and everything else, as we are identified with the whole of existence. You first dis-identify, to later identify with Empty Fullness or Full Emptiness. This results in Joy and Gratitude for your journey, the life, the ride, and not how smooth your life is.
However, this is no easy thing to do. We must listen deeply to the whole of our experience, our ‘unfolding when we orient towards our heart’s deepest longing’ at whatever the cost. This deep level of listening is what True Meditation is (see Adyashanti’s True Meditation) ‘being attentive to the whole of your experience’, especially through embodied consciousness connecting the head, heart, and lower belly.
When we are fully aligned in this way, we come to realise our heart’s deepest longing, Ananda (passion or bliss). This is not happiness in getting what we want but full awareness-presence infused in every aspect of our life, in full alignment with Truth (see Lama Yeshe’s Introduction to Tantra, where he expands on our desire for happiness, our limited concepts that mean we get caught up in our day-to-day desires, and where we learn how to deal skilfully with pleasure, not by rejecting it, and not by grasping it, but by unifying our mind-body with emptiness, nonduality, where we experience pleasure as if it where somewhere in space, where it becomes universal, Ananda).
But when our life is not smooth and we encounter Shadow Work, it is not a battle between dark and light, it is simply the absence or presence of consciousness. In the tantric tradition the shadow is just where light/consciousness is not (what we are currently not looking at). The job is to look at it and integrate it. We are not looking for growth, in the Western tradition, but rather ‘clear seeing’. So rather than growing we are deconstructing, riding ourselves of what is preventing us from ‘clear seeing’ (emotions, stories, attachments, etc).
This is more difficult than we think as we need radical self-acceptance. This is not a judgement as approval in opposition to disapproval (mostly based on self-hatred), but a recognition that you couldn’t be other than you are right now. This recognition is the foundation of building self-love, cultivating your life energy for a sense of aliveness. So, we don’t ‘let go’ (usually of what we don’t like) but rather integrate what we bring to consciousness into the flow (whatever we are in the here and now). This shifts us from shame to presence. From what should be to what already is, what we already are, a manifested pattern of consciousness. This, indeed, is the whole purpose of Tantra, to awake to our true nature (bodha/bodhi) and thereby shift into a paradigm of radical freedom (moksa) where our view (of the path), our practice, and the impact on our life align.
We can tell this alignment is taking place when we find that what we want is what Life wants, not passively, not in resignation but in excitement, and ‘eagerness to discover where the currents of life-energy are flowing and the active desire to merge with them’. A sign of awakening (bodhi, being awake) on the spiritual awakening spectrum. Wallis suggests there are five phases (although not necessarily in this order) were we wake up out of our socially constructed self, our unconscious conceptual overlay, our dream of separation, our belief in an objective reality, and to the absolute ground of bring. Culminating in the nondual truth of reality.
This is the Truth, but the Truth cannot be put into words. Fixing on Truth leads to silence.
Bringing it all Together
Tantra has been called the path to uncovering our essentially pure nature, as Christopher Wallis puts it, our true nature (bodhi) and thereby shifting into a paradigm of radical freedom (moksa). There are many ‘near enemies’ on the path, however, when our view (of the path), our practice, and the impact on our life align we can see signs that we are indeed on the spiritual awakening spectrum.
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Email me direct if you are interested in mindful, embodied, trauma-informed, or spiritually-informed coaching, or if you would like to join my new Pink Tantra Towards Awakening group for chat rooms, video channels and in-person workshops around tantra and intimacy practices robert.pinktantra@gmail.com
See my personal development / personality profiling book DISCover the Power of You published through John Hunt Publishing Ltd, 2017. ISBN: 978-1-78535-591-2
And for a bit of light reading, see my first historical fictional novel Fermented Spirits published through Austin Macauley Publishers, 2022. ISBN-13: 978-1398437159